--:-- Host: Today, we are joined by Rob Latka, a professor at Tulane's A.B. Freeman School of Business and the author of *The Venture Alchemist: How Big Tech Turned Profits into Power*. This is one of the most important and dynamic conversations we've ever had on this podcast. It was my great honor to host Rob. I hope that you will listen with an open mind and take this conversation for exactly what it is: a warning and a call to arms to take back our own critical thinking and the future for our children.
--:-- Host: Okay, so Rob, I'm really excited to have you on the show. Obviously, you referred over to me as someone that I "had to talk to" and couldn't have a podcast if I didn't talk to, because you have this incredible book, which as of this recording—obviously people will listen to it at different times—but as of this recording, just came out yesterday. Immediate number one on Amazon in the venture capital category. Incredibly exciting topic.
--:-- Host: In researching the book and researching your background, my first question was, I was unaware that people weren't aware of a lot of the gray area that these businesses operate in. My general understanding was just, well, one, it's life and life has a lot of gray, but that there's a lot of gray that these companies get into. I thought we were all kind of aware. I think this is wonderful that you've written this book. But one, I guess, start with: Do you agree with that? Do you think the general population is unaware of some of the things that these companies are doing and just how this ecosystem has developed into beyond just profits? And then, why do you think that is? Do you think it's just head in the sand? Do you think it's just people are busy? Or do you think it's being hidden from them?
--:-- Rob Latka: Well, Ryan, thanks for having me on. And that's an awesome place to start. Let me just begin with that. That's a way to dive right in because it's a really important question.
--:-- Rob Latka: Look, I think we all had this hero's myth about startups and about entrepreneurs. For the last 20 years, technology has been this amazing miracle creator. It's been something that literally with a touch of a button, a car will show up and take me anywhere I want to go. I pull out my phone and it's not a phone anymore—we still call it a phone, but it's not a phone. It's a supercomputer that can connect me to information anywhere, thanks to Google. And it's a supercomputer that can connect me to people all around the world that maybe I met once, but then I learn about their lives thanks to Instagram or Facebook. These are amazing talismans in some ways.
--:-- Rob Latka: And yet we've vilified them now. They've gone from these amazing heroes to these villains. We're worried about what they're doing to our children with social media—not just the sort of dark web, stalkerish behavior stuff that we were worried about before, but things like, what is it doing to our children's brains if they're getting this much dopamine this early in their lives? That's what the Surgeon General is warning us about. Vivek Murthy, May 23rd of last year, said that it's affecting our children and the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala. It's impacting the way their brains are being wired. That's really scary.
--:-- Rob Latka: For me, there was a lot going on here that is not only in that gray area, but that is very much a human story. That's what I wanted to really do with the book: tell human stories. Choices were made. People made choices. Some of those choices were made with moral codes in mind and moral frameworks. Some of them were made against some of those moral frameworks that they originally had. They made trade-offs and they accepted that. Some of them wanted to do things that I think we can look back on and pretty fairly and reasonably say that wasn't the right thing to do.
--:-- Rob Latka: For me, I'm not trying to judge anyone. I want to approach it more with curiosity than judgment. The mantra I've had through the entire research process and especially the writing process was: How do I shed more light than heat? How do I shed light on what happened here? How do I tell stories in ways that illuminate? How do I make people think in a really deep way about different sides of an issue? Then how do I give them the research to go even deeper so they can challenge their own thinking as they grapple with some of the ethical dilemmas that are brought up in the book? And how do I not make it more adversarial and acrimonious and vindictive? That happens too much in our world. I don't want more of that. Instead, I want more light. That's the way I've approached the book, and that's why I decided to write these stories and put this out in the world.
--:-- Host: I love that. A lot of my work is helping entrepreneurs and executives with their decision-making processes. A big part of that is helping them find the blind spots that they make through beliefs and biases and all the different things that are built into our brain that helped us survive the jungle, but now in this information overload age, just don't work—like anchoring and survivorship bias, et cetera. What I love about what you just said is I'm hearing a framework and not a belief structure. Too often, I think we're being sold people's belief structures: "Believe what I'm saying, look at how smart I am, and this is what you should believe." Versus: "Here's a set of information and a system that if you work through your problem using this system, you'll be able to get an answer that works for you and hopefully works for your community, your family, society, et cetera." Versus: "If you don't believe this, you're wrong." We just don't need more of that. I couldn't be in more agreement with you on that particular topic.
--:-- Rob Latka: Well, let me tell you how I got there.
--:-- Host: Yeah, please.
--:-- Rob Latka: It was conversations with my students. They're being trained—whether it's in high school or through social media, through TikTok—the divisiveness of where, again, TikTok is owned by the Chinese state. What is being shown to these kids is really extreme, especially around issues that are really controversial. Why? Because China doesn't care about right or left or even right or wrong. They just want us to not like each other and to be at each other. That's the reason why on TikTok, the algorithm is maximizing the extreme content. It doesn't matter which side of the campus debate you're on in terms of Israel and Palestine, Hamas and all that's happening there. They just want people to be angry. That's why TikTok's algorithm is maximizing that.
--:-- Rob Latka: When I think about what it's doing to my students, they're coming in with this intensity, and they're also afraid. They're afraid that if they don't post things, silence is violence or silence is complicity. No, maybe you're just pausing to think. That's one thing I really struggle with. There's also a sense of: if I post the wrong thing, I could be canceled forever. You can't make a mistake. What that's telling that student is that you literally can't ever make a mistake. So you both have to be posting things publicly that are these very extreme ideas, and you can't make mistakes. This does not bode well for any of us because we're human and we're flawed and we all make mistakes. We are not the product of our worst statements ever, or our worst bad jokes that didn't land right.
--:-- Rob Latka: That's what our students are having to deal with right now. That's what my college kids are dealing with. They're also telling me that the way to do research—this is where I'm trying to help them think critically, think deeply, pause—the way to do research is to find information to back up what they want to argue. They're literally being cooked into the system that if I can make a really strong argument, it doesn't matter if it actually is right or not. If it sounds right, if I can be angrier about it, if I can be more extreme about it, that allows me to feel really good, and I'll find the information to back that up.
--:-- Rob Latka: Why do we have that? I think a lot of it is because social media and the instant gratification and the dopamine hits all fuel a system that encourages this. It does not fuel a system that encourages you to sit down and read a nearly 500-page book. 300 pages of writing and 140 pages of end notes—that's what I've got here. The book itself is in many ways part of the solution in my mind. If you can sit down and really go in deep with a book and think critically about these stories—which are very fun to read, I try to make them very entertaining and enjoyable, but they're also deeply researched—if you want to go into the end notes, if you don't think my sources are right, great. I want you to do that. I want you to really understand where it all came from.
--:-- Rob Latka: That's part of the reason why I wrote the book: for my students. I wanted them to have something that they could sit down and literally retrain their brains away from their phones with the same thing that allowed me to train my brain when I was growing up, which was reading very deeply and thinking very critically and trying to really go in depth. That's what this book tries to do.
--:-- Host: So they're prioritizing right over truth, essentially.
--:-- Rob Latka: Yeah. I think that these companies in many ways have never prioritized truth. If we think about what social media is, you're not prioritizing that there's a truthfulness about what you're conveying. You're projecting a better version of yourself. That's what it is. That's another word for a deception.
--:-- Rob Latka: There are lots of deceptions in our interactions online. We lie to the internet every day. We click on terms of service agreements that none of us have ever read and we say, "Okay, we've read them." This is not just what I post onto Facebook or Instagram. It's that I lie to the internet every day. What I don't realize in having done so for two decades is I've given up all of my data, which is the most valuable asset of our time. I've given up all the value of all the content that I'm creating. I'm giving up all of my time and my attention, which are valuable. These companies make so much money off of that.
--:-- Rob Latka: That's an important conversation to begin having. If we could actually ensure that people shared in the value of their data, shared in the value of their content, shared in the value of the time and attention that they devote to one topic or another, then that changes the game. For me, that's actually more free markets and a free capitalist system where I get to have choice about where I take my followers, about where I allow my data to go. Right now, you don't even know. Your data can be sold from a first party to a second party, a third party, a fourth party, and it can end up in the hands of the Chinese, the Russians, or whomever. You'll never know. That's scary. That's something that's really important for us to start to reckon with.
--:-- Host: This to me is the most important conversation that we can have in our society today. It's not the wars, although the wars are terrible. It's not AI. It's not climate change. It's not racism, sexism, or any of the other isms. It is this conversation, because none of those things can be solved without this conversation.
--:-- Host: One thing that I have become very enamored with is X. I do not think it's perfect in any regard, so I'm not trying to present it as such. However, I've done a tremendous amount of research, I followed Elon's career for a very long time. I think he's crazy in all the ways that someone as brilliant as him is going to be crazy, but I honestly think Elon is trying to help. I think that platform is the closest thing we have to something where there can be a truth, particularly with the community notes function, which I find to be not perfect, but getting better.
--:-- Host: Now, think about how scary what I just said was. The closest thing that we have to a platform that holds truth is the current version of X, which for everything I just said has all kinds of warts and blind spots, and there's still tons of bots and all these other issues. How do we start to get past this? How do we start to have conversations?
--:-- Host: I think podcasts have been tremendous. There will come a day when there will be statues of Joe Rogan in coliseums because he kept this platform alive during a time where it almost died and continued to talk about topics, whether you believe them or not. I have fallen in love with Graham Hancock and do believe there was a lost civilization, I have to be honest, even though I know that's... whatever.
--:-- Host: I think this platform and the fact that we're face to face here—I know, at least at this point, I know you're not AI talking to me—we can have honest discussions, they can go on in perpetuity. But outside of being in person, which I do believe there's going to be a counter swing back to live events because as AI and all this stuff develops, if it's coming through the screen, you're not going to know. There will be a time in the not too distant future where you will not know the difference between you doing this interview as you and you doing this interview as your AI assistant.
--:-- Host: In the meantime, in the tumult of now to some point in the future, how do we get through this? How are you coaching your students to start to think more critically and not just about the next provocative thing they can post on their TikTok or Instagram to get more likes and shares?
--:-- Rob Latka: Happy to share this story because it's a really powerful one. I decided to launch the book at the Berkshire annual meeting. I was in Omaha. I'm very blessed. I had a chance to work for Howard G. Buffett, Warren's son. Howard W. Buffett is someone who read many early copies of this book and has been someone I've turned to throughout my life. He's a good friend. He's actually the godfather to my second kid. I had the chance to be there at the annual meeting.
--:-- Rob Latka: One of the reasons I went with Columbia University Press is because they've done such good work on value investing, on long-term investing. When you think about that approach, when you think about long-term intergenerational value creation, Berkshire is one of the most amazing stories of capitalism, one of the most amazing stories of the American dream that you can ever imagine. Warren Buffett in one lifetime created more value than many nation states have ever created. Then what did he do? The Giving Pledge. He gave it all away to help other people. It's an amazing American success story. Talk about people that are going to build monuments.
--:-- Host: That's incredible.
--:-- Rob Latka: I'm there talking to people about long-term investing. They're like, "You're a venture capital startup guy. What are you doing here?" I'm like, "That is the point." We have this amazing technology, but it doesn't have to be all about short-term immediate gratification. It actually can be the thing that connects us and encourages us to be not our worst selves, not the fear and all of the stuff from the savannah, but actually is way deeper of who we are as humans. That's what's going to separate the content that's being created increasingly by AI—which is going to be very productive—versus what's creative and interesting and new. That's what's most human.
--:-- Rob Latka: When I think about long-term value creation, these companies haven't done it. Companies like Instagram, Facebook—which are both owned by Meta—are creating a very different world than the one that a Berkshire Hathaway is creating. That long-term value creation, when you really think about what that means and how many people have benefited from that as Berkshire shareholders, you can stop and say, "Wait a second, there's a huge opportunity here to really think long-term about the way that we create value." That's the reason why I did the Berkshire annual meeting.
--:-- Rob Latka: Now get this. I posted on Facebook. I haven't been posting on Facebook hardly at all, but for the book, I was like, "I at least want to get the word out that this thing is now out in the world." They deleted my post, saying it was not my intellectual property. They literally took down the post saying that this was not my intellectual property. That happened just last week. Pretty amazing moment. I'm sitting here saying, "This is my book and I'm excited to have it in the world." It was great. I sold out of all the first run of the book—the first printing of it—at the Berkshire Annual Meeting because I was slinging books at the airport. It's the busiest day at Eppley Field, busier than Christmas, busier than Thanksgiving, is the Sunday of the annual meeting. I was there from nine to five. It was wonderful. I was meeting all kinds of awesome people from all around the world—from India, from Europe, from all across the United States. They were interested in this book. I was able to sell a lot of books.
--:-- Rob Latka: I posted to Facebook feeling very good about it. This will be something that Facebook's algorithms would like to see because it's something that I've created value here. There's something worth looking at. Guess what? They delete it because they said this was not my intellectual property.
--:-- Host: Do you think that's bullshit? I think it's interesting that LinkedIn left it up. How about that? I think it's very interesting that LinkedIn left that up. LinkedIn's more used to people who are actually talking about value creation in terms of professional careers and that sort of stuff. Facebook's more used to things that people are maybe trying to take credit for things that they didn't do or otherwise, where they're going to take down that IP. I'll be honest with you, I don't even think a human being did that. I think an algorithm did.
--:-- Rob Latka: Oh, for sure. I think an algorithm did. I don't think a human being, whether in the United States or in India or wherever else, saw that thing. I think it was an algorithm.
--:-- Host: See, I'm wondering if "How Big Tech Turned Profits into Power"—I can see Facebook's algorithm not appreciating that statement.
--:-- Rob Latka: Well, if they don't appreciate that, then wait until they get their hands on chapter one. I'm serious. I begin with the story. What did Mark Zuckerberg do? He creates something called FaceMash. Let's slow down and think about this. We all know it from the movie, from Aaron Sorkin's movie. But let's actually understand what was happening there. Mark Zuckerberg did a cyber attack. He called it that. He called it hacking. He did a cyber attack against Harvard. He stole pictures of underage students. Some of them were 17 years old. He compared girls to girls and boys to boys. He's literally stealing photos of underage girls and boys—but mostly girls—and encouraging people to judge each other for entertainment.
--:-- Rob Latka: What is Instagram today? It's judgment as entertainment. It's the same thing. In that origin story, Zuckerberg said, "I wonder whether I should compare some of these pictures of girls to girls or to barnyard animals." That's literally what he's saying in that moment. I say in the book, if it sounds sophomoric, it's because it is. He's a sophomore in college. It was a college prank. It was Halloween time.
--:-- Rob Latka: What did he do with that though? He learned that people would judge each other and that that would be entertaining and that they would keep clicking. Under oath, Zuckerberg later says what he learned from that moment was that "people are more voyeuristic than I would have thought." That was the line. Where does it go from there? He gets pulled in front of the ad board. He is chastised for this. There are women's groups on campus that are all up in arms, and the email listservs are lighting up saying this is sexist and this is horrible.
--:-- Rob Latka: What happens next? Zuckerberg literally codes a website for them as an olive branch to make it better. He does a website for these groups. Then he gets to continue at Harvard, ends up dropping out, of course, moves to Silicon Valley, takes on venture investment, and the platform scales.
--:-- Rob Latka: What does Harvard do longer term? I think it's important that we understand what the consequences were and what the lessons he was learning were. Zuckerberg is given an honorary degree—not just the college degree that he never earned, an honorary doctorate—for hacking Harvard and basically creating a platform that we all judge each other in this way and becoming a centibillionaire for it. That's important. He has a hundred billion dollars plus to his name as a result.
--:-- Rob Latka: Is Harvard really prioritizing truth? "Veritas" is their motto. Is that what they're prioritizing there? Is it truth, or by giving him an honorary degree that he never earned—an honorary doctorate—are they celebrating money at frankly any cost? Especially when you think about the fact that in that same chapter, chapter one, I talk about how Facebook had plans to build products for children younger than six years old. Is that the world we want to live in? Is that the world that I want my children to grow up in? My answer personally is no, but that's what I want everyone to ask questions about.
--:-- Rob Latka: In the Frances Haugen files, that was documented. The leaked files from Frances Haugen—they literally wanted to engage our children during play dates. They said that they had a responsibility to engage our children during play dates. I don't think that's the way our world needs to be. That's not what I want for my four and seven year old. It's all out there. Those documents, all of her screenshots, are on the internet. I think it's the first time anyone's ever talked about that because the Wall Street Journal covered a lot, but then that story lost its legs. Eventually they can only cover so much of what was in those files. That's been out there for the last year and a half, two years, and no one's covered it as far as I know, but I certainly do.
--:-- Host: What's incredible is if he were to do that today, he'd be canceled, blown up. He'd have people marching in circles, not allowing him to get to campus. That would be the next huge anti-women, anti-... I mean, he would get destroyed for that today. And he's got an honorary doctorate for it.
--:-- Host: Here's what's crazy about all of this. I think cancel culture, all of the sort of divisiveness around that—and this is what comes through in the book, again, trying to shed more light than heat—I think all of that heat becomes overheated and we get angrier at each other. I blame people both on the right and the left for this, by the way. I think it's on both sides. All of the sort of woke, anti-woke, all of this ends up in a place where we're just angry at each other. Again, that's what China wants. That's what Russia wants. They want us to hate each other so democracy fails.
--:-- Host: I actually believe this is my viewpoint on this because I think about it a lot. I don't think MAGA hates woke, and I actually don't think woke hates MAGA. I think both groups are so frustrated by their station in life, by the hopelessness that they feel in advancement. MAGA tends to skew older and doesn't necessarily understand the younger generation. The younger generation naturally tends—you're liberal until you have to pay taxes and then you become a conservative. They're looking at this older generation going, "We'll never have what you have."
--:-- Host: I was just complaining to a buddy of mine this morning—I'm complaining but observing. Single dad. I have two kids. They're with me half the time. I bought two half bags of groceries, and it cost $110. Thankfully, I am in a financial state where that doesn't put me over the edge, but that's not enough food to get through the week even just for me. Say that's $400 a month just in groceries, and that amount of food would not get me through the week even if it were just me. I look at that, and now you take a kid who's out of college making 50 grand, who's looking at this dead end job with middle managers that are in their early 60s that now aren't going to leave until their mid-70s. They feel rage and they don't know how to express it because our corporate cultures have gotten to the point where we can't actually have honest conversations.
--:-- Host: So what do they do? They dye their hair blue, shave half their head. Even though they're gay, they're pro-Hamas or Palestine. They just take on all these things that are confused and believe that climate change is ruining the world, except they hate nuclear power. You have all these conflicting ideas and it's just rage filled. Coming back to what I said to you before, it's why I was so excited to talk to you today. It's not the "this versus that." It's, how do we have a conversation today where we don't hate each other at the end, even if we disagree?
--:-- Host: Where do we have that conversation? I do a lot of executive coaching. One of the first things I have people do—I won't go to TikTok because I agree with you, there is no way to bypass the extremism of the algorithm. However, on Instagram, I will tell you that while they will occasionally pop something in, for the most part, Instagram is more dialed to what you spend time on. I'll have them scroll their feed for me slowly and we will take inventory of what is coming through their feed. If you look at my feed on Instagram, you find inspirational quotes because I love that stuff. David Goggins yelling, "Stay hard!" I don't know, I just like it. It gets me feeling good. Inspirational quotes, science stuff—I love science stuff about the universe. And how to coach 10-year-olds baseball because I'm a baseball coach for my kids and I love baseball. That's what you see over and over and over again because anything else I don't spend any time on. But even then, you will occasionally get "Florida man gets hit by car, see what happened," and you're like, "I don't want that." But they're still trying to inject it in to see if they can catch me.
--:-- Host: So where do we go to have these conversations? What is a place? Does it have to be in person? Is there a place where we can do it online? Are podcasts the last bastion? How do we start to have these conversations?
--:-- Host: So I'm going to throw one big idea at you, which is near the end of the book. I'll go ahead and give it out now because I think it's a cool thought. If we, instead of clicking on Instagram ads, just scroll right past them. And you can still use the app to scroll right past them every time when you're about to click on it. Or even better, if as an act of civil disobedience you put down your phone, you were present with your kids or your family or your friends, right? An act of civil disobedience. That's what that would be. If you just scroll past the ad or if you turn off your phone and are present, it would break Facebook's business model. It would break Meta's business model in one quarter if enough of us did that. Just scroll past it.
--:-- Rob Latka: And here the power of that idea is me saying it to you, and then whoever is going to hear this, the next time that they are on Instagram and they see an ad, they're going to think of me saying this and us talking about this and why it's important. And then they'll go, "Huh, that's interesting. I remember that from that moment in that podcast." And they might tell someone. And then they might tell someone. And then it might catch fire. We never know.
--:-- Rob Latka: And my hope is that in reading this book, people are actually understanding the people and the choices that they were making all along. And they realize that we've all been making choices, too. Every time you click on an Instagram ad, you're enriching a company that, in my mind, Meta, has made some really horrible decisions. Let me give you one example. Stop the Steal, right? They shut down what was essentially the fastest growing social movement in history. It was the fastest growing Facebook group in history, which makes it one of the fastest growing social movements in history because people have never been connected like that before. Now, whether you think they should have shut that down or not is one thing or the other. But the way that our U.S. Congress, when we looked at January 6th, it was the purple team. They didn't release the report, but it's out there and I use it in the book. They said they were just making that decision on the fly. They are not instituting a clear policy about whether they shut down that group or not, or whether they shut down all these other groups or not, or whether they delete some posts or not. That's what our own U.S. Congress investigation actually said about the decisions that were made at Facebook, now Meta. And also that's what they said about what was happening at YouTube, owned by Google, owned by Alphabet, and other platforms. They go through it all, and I go through all that in Chapter 15.
--:-- Rob Latka: And so I think that's one of the important things to realize is that these weren't policies that were being broken. There were no policies. They weren't being instituted in a way that was clear to anybody. And that included removing a sitting president of the United States. And again, whether you agree with whether that should have happened or not, that is a precedent that has been set by these extremely powerful platforms. And these platforms are essentially the places where we go to spend our time and our attention. A friend of mine, Tameka Tilleman, talks about this as digital feudalism. That we are going on there and we are doing the work for them. And we aren't treated like citizens where our rights are clear and the consequences are known. We're treated like we are serfs, where they get to make the call and the rest of us deal with the consequences. I think that's a really powerful idea, that digital feudalism. These platforms are essentially—it's not our property, it's theirs. It's not our data, it's theirs. It's not our time or our attention, it's theirs. That's the way they view the world. And I'll be honest with you, I'm tired of it. I'm going to reject that. And I'm going to write an entire book about how that's just not going to be the way it needs to be because we can make different choices.
--:-- Rob Latka: And these companies are not startups anymore. They're the big tech conglomerates that have taken over. And the startups that beat them are going to be the next ones that change the world. These are the corporate behemoths of our time. And the disruptive companies are going to be the ones who offer you an alternative where you can share in the value of the data you create. That's what's going to happen.
--:-- Rob Latka: So I was at a—my kids had a baseball game last night. And the coaches for the other team are buddies of mine. And actually, we coach a travel team together as well. This was rec. It doesn't matter. And my buddy's head coach for the other team had accidentally told two of the kids to play shortstop. So the kids are standing there at shortstop and they're arguing over who gets to play shortstop. We've all been there.
--:-- Rob Latka: So they start yelling into the coach, "Who gets to play?" And he goes, "I don't care. Figure it out." Right? Because it's whatever. He gives it back to the kids. They have no vehicle to decide who gets shortstop. So I look at him and I go, "How scary is it that they don't know how to resolve this conflict?" And he kind of laughed. And I said, "We figured that out by playing a thousand games of wiffle ball and football and basketball in backyards where, hey, sometimes it came to blows, but eventually you figured out how to resolve these without that." And they didn't have a conflict resolution mechanism because one, we've created these safe zones in schools where you can't have conflict. And it's like, look, am I pro-violence? Not at all. But the world is really, really hard and doesn't give two shits about us. And by the world, I mean the universe.
--:-- Rob Latka: And sometimes one of the defining moments in my life was—I used to be very chunky as a kid. When I was in elementary school, a nickname was Fat Boy and whatever. It doesn't matter. But the point is, like all kids, I had a nickname and I used to be harassed. And in fifth grade, as we would leave the school to go to the playground, there was an alleyway that teachers didn't really hang out in. And these three kids would circle me and make fun of me. I also came from a really poor, tiny town that was part of a much bigger school district. So they made fun of me for that, whatever. It sucked. I mean, it sucked. And one day, I'd been crying and my dad had been teaching me. My dad's like, "Look, at some point you're gonna have to stand up for yourself or it's never gonna stop." So one day, this kid just gets a little too close and I throw this haymaker and I hit him in the neck. Eyes closed, just fear and rage and all these things. And he falls to the ground and he goes, "She punched me in the neck." And now he's crying. I'm crying. The other two buddies, they don't know what to do. Guess what they never did again. I never got called Fat Boy or made fun of for the town I came from from those three particular individuals ever again. And from most kids, because the story spread pretty quickly. Am I pro-violence? No. But what I'm saying is we have created these spaces where we've removed reality to the point where it's a popularity contest of who can post the next viral meme against the other person. That's how we're trying to solve things versus how humans actually interact with each other.
--:-- Rob Latka: And it was so scary to me last night. And again, I didn't expect to share this story with you, but I was watching these two kids and they have no mechanism to do this. Their entire world is Fortnite, this ridiculous safe space schools, and social media. And they don't know actually how to interact with another human in person and resolve conflict.
--:-- Host: How do we get that back? Like legitimately, how do we get that back?
--:-- Rob Latka: Yeah. Well, I think a lot of it impacts on one thing I would say is that being uncomfortable is what education is about. Being uncomfortable is learning and growing. Especially for me, I teach entrepreneurship. I teach how to create great companies that create value that no one else ever has. That's my goal—you're solving problems that haven't been solved before. And how do you solve those problems? You get out of your own head because it's not about your idea. If you had the idea, you would have already become a multibillionaire off of just the idea. It's actually about understanding other people and getting to a position where you're able to move far beyond your own self-interest. That's what the Internet is teaching these kids—it's all about you. It's all about your interests. You're the most important thing.
--:-- Rob Latka: Literally at the beginning of Facebook, they had at the top of the website, "This is you." Well, of course it was. It was your picture and your name. But they were trying to teach you something about your identity. That you literally are whomever you're projecting yourself out to be on the Internet. "This is you." That's profound. They were teaching people that who we are presenting ourselves to be on the Internet was more important than who we actually are. And so of course we end up here, where no one can actually have real conversations or deal with conflict or deal with uncomfortable situations where they don't know the answers. Of course we've ended up in a situation where there is way more violence coming out through these protests that we're seeing on every side. Why? Because we're not sitting down having conversations where we actually learn and grow.
--:-- Rob Latka: And that's my fear for where it goes next. If we continue down this path, you could end up spending more and more of your time through some sort of virtual reality system where you're only spending time with people who are like you from all around the world, as opposed to in your church or in your community. There's a real interesting heterogeneousness of your neighborhood, of folks that are part of your community. And that's what America is all about—that we actually spend time in community with each other, not staring into some virtual reality system where we get to self-select who we want to hear from and who we want to believe. We're already doing that with social media now. That's what's already happening, especially with some of these systems that only push you towards your filter bubbles, only push you to the left or the right or whatever particular issue area you care about. That gets worse in the metaverse where that's how we're spending all our time and all our money and all of our attention. That's really dangerous.
--:-- Rob Latka: And that's one of the things I learned from somebody who called it out very early on. And then I interviewed him for the epilogue. In this book, I basically go through all the origin stories of these different tech companies. And I also checked the college newspapers in 2004, 2005, 2006 as Facebook was sitting on their campuses. And I'm like, what were the concerns then? And the concerns you and I are talking about were discussed in those college newspapers 20 years ago. And what's amazing is that I track these people down. I asked them, how do you feel now? And there's no sense of self-righteousness of "I told you so." No one's saying that. They're just disappointed. They're really sad about how the internet turned out. There's no sense of "I'm going to boast that I called it 20 years ago." It's more like, "Oh, I'd forgotten I'd said that. Yeah, that sounds like something I would have said. And yeah, this is how it's showing up in my life right now. This is how I'm approaching raising my kids." These are really good people that are just normal folks that don't deserve to be in a book alongside Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Page and Sergey Brin, but they are. And part of the story here is that they're the ones who actually we need to be listening to. They're the ones who actually have the answers.
--:-- Rob Latka: And that's why democracy, as you're discussing, can actually still work if we actually get back to that. Because we need to be able to disagree without being disagreeable. We maybe need to even come close to blows—probably not fully to blows like you were saying—but close to it. Have a tough conversation, but then hug it out afterwards, be cool with it, and be fine. It is okay to disagree. It is okay to be very upset about something, impassioned about something, but do it in person in a conversation where you have to look somebody in the eyes and understand that they are a real human being too. And it's not just about you typing something into the internet that goes off and gets you a lot of dopamine as a result. That's not what we're built for. That's literally not who we are as human beings.
--:-- Host: Did you see the argument that's going around that was made in person in a debate at Oxford by Winston Marshall, with Nancy Pelosi in the crowd? Did you see this clip? It's like 14 minutes long. It's a debate style argument. Nancy Pelosi shows up in Oxford and this guy, Winston Marshall—I think he's a former student of Oxford, I don't think he's going there right now—he positions this argument that populism is democracy, right? That's his argument essentially, and that we have misconstrued this word and turned it into a negative because it was a way of defining Donald Trump in a negative, because most people don't understand what it means. And they just corrupted this term. And actually, when you dive in, he makes this whole argument. And my point is not whether he is right or who's right. That's not the point. It was so well thought out, so well articulated, that you could agree with it, you could disagree with it, but you couldn't deny that he believed it and that he had spent time crafting it in a way that was thoughtful and meaningful and not meant to be clipped and turned into memes.
--:-- Host: I've watched it like three times, not even so much for the content, although I do a hundred percent believe him and think Nancy Pelosi is devil spawn. But that aside, I just—the way he worked in—I was like, how many of our current politicians at the national level could actually articulate a thought in 14 minutes the way that he did? I'm not sure many. And that's such a scary thought because we are being fed memes from people who are supposed to be the best among us. These are supposed to be the best among us, our national politicians. They are a representation of us. We should be sending our best there. We are obviously not. That has been lost. But it is so scary to think that we have representatives that don't understand basic facts of the laws of nature, and they'll make decisions on bills and then run literally from the hall to the reporters so that they can get their meme clip statement out before someone else.
--:-- Host: How does the—I don't want to say average American—but how does someone who's listening to this, who maybe is in startup mode or is building and just doesn't have time to pick their head up, how do they—I think it is our obligation as adult Americans to at least have a semi-working knowledge of what's happening in the world. I think this counter movement of "I just don't follow politics" is bullshit. I think it is absolute nonsense. I think it is a cop out. I get it, these are hard topics and they're big topics, but they impact your life in a way that—part of the reason we're here is because for the last two decades, we basically just acquiesced to whatever we're told. So if someone's listening to this and they read your book and they come back and they go, "Okay, I get it. I can't just look at the next meme that comes through my feed." What is your recommendation for them to still be able to gather this information, to still be able to do their own research, to still be able to formulate their own thoughts on these topics?
--:-- Rob Latka: Yeah. It's all about truth seeking. That's what you're talking about.
--:-- Rob Latka: Yeah. And there's a fundamental understanding that on these platforms, especially social media, you're not going to be getting that. It is not built for that. It is built to feed your brain dopamine. It's built to capture your time and your attention so they can advertise more stuff to you. I think what's healthy is actually sitting down and reading a full book. That's the reason why I wrote one—I want people to read it. And if people read it and they disagree with me, then awesome. Guess what? These tools can be extremely powerful for people to then engage in dialogue about what they're reading. But for me, I didn't put this out as a stream of TikTok videos. I put this out as a book because I want people to go in depth. I want them to have things they disagree with and then have to think about it and then have to encounter other stories and other ideas and think about that. And that's the value of a book. A book is something that can truly change somebody's mind over time because you're learning more and more and more, and it should make you uncomfortable and you should have to go to the end notes to really try and go to the source. That's the point. That's what I wrote this for—so that people could go in deep.
--:-- Rob Latka: I do want to make sure that I get this part in though, because this is something that was what you were talking about earlier. And your listeners need to hear it. This was the take that I had on page 186 about what's happened here with technology. I say, "The challenges of the Silicon Age," which is how I talk about this time period, "are complex. Venture-backed technologies enhanced the U.S. economy for too few, which was exacerbated by multiple global economic collapses, an unprecedented nationwide opioid epidemic, a once-in-a-generation pandemic, and all along, economic opportunities have been affected by deeply unfair educational disparities, including the reality that where you live almost always decides the quality of your education." And I add that in there—I'll just pause to say—I add that in there because I am from Roanoke, Virginia, raised by a single mom who was a school teacher. I feel like I was very fortunate to have the educational opportunities that I had. And don't get me wrong, I worked really, really hard for them. I tried to wring every drop out of my education. And there were plenty of people who doubted me along the way that told me I shouldn't have done it. They're like, "Oh, you're thinking too high. You're trying to get to the Ivy League because no one's ever done that." I had plenty of people that doubted me that I proved wrong. And I feel very, very fortunate because there are a lot of smart people who I grew up with that didn't have the breaks that I had. And so I put that in there because I think that's something that we all need to understand. At least this book, this one right here that I've written, you can get in the library. So I want that to at least be a starting point for some people. There's educational disparities. At least on these topics, I've tried to level the playing field a bit.
--:-- Rob Latka: And then I keep going. And I say, "But when it comes to the upward mobility and the promise of the American dream, the 21st century, the last 20 years, has been decidedly un-American thus far." And why is that? It's because the current generation is the first in U.S. history to believe the next generation will have it worse off than they do. We're the first ones to ever feel that. And it's not just people from where I come from in Appalachia or live in New Orleans where I am right now, or in rural areas and urban areas. 61% is the number that Pew found. 61% of people think their kids are going to have it worse off than they do. And there are reasons for that because the science and technology of this era is enriching people, especially because of all of the data, and it's replacing jobs and people are falling behind on bills. And you're right, in more American homes—and this is fully sourced in here, so if anyone doubts me, check my sources—in more American homes, both parents had to work because the rising cost of mortgages and child care and basics like groceries and household goods. That's what's happening to us.
--:-- Rob Latka: And the reality is, if we zoom back out in terms of the big issue that you talked about, why is that? It's because data is valuable. Our time and our attention is valuable. If it were an asset that we actually fully understood and weren't just giving away through terms of service agreements that no one ever reads, if we actually fully understood that, it would change the economic system to be more free and more fair. It would be more capitalistic for me to have the ability to choose who gets access to that data and who does not. And we are 20 plus years into this Silicon Age and just now coming around to the idea that actually we should have been sharing that value all along. And I think that's the big shift. If this book does anything that you're talking about in terms of changing people's minds, that's something that actually could change the world. And I hope it does, because here's the reason. If we don't, then we will continue to have the most valuable asset of our time—these digital assets, all of our data—completely monopolized by people who are oligarchs, by people who are literally controlling the platforms that we're on. And digital feudalism, I do think is the right idea behind that. We're on the platforms doing this work and we're on the platforms creating this value. And most of it goes to very few people in Silicon Valley. Mark Zuckerberg owns 18% of Facebook's—now Meta's—economic interest and 56% of the voting shares. 56%. He's both chairman of the board and CEO. That's poor governance according to anybody who's looking at corporate governance standards. To me, that's not just not great in terms of the way that we all look at it. But that also means that we have choices to make about whether we want to use this platform or not.
--:-- Host: I want to be respectful of your time and we'll wrap up here. I have one more quasi comment and then I want to just get your feedback on it and then we'll wrap. And I want to direct everybody on where to go to get the book and where to connect with you and your work. But one of the things that I try to share with people as often as I can on this platform and if I'm out doing a keynote or whatever I'm doing is—people, I feel like far too many people believe that somehow we have evolved past feudalism. It wasn't that long ago. It wasn't that long ago. It's a hundred years. These things—there were still kings and queens and monarchies and feudalistic states and warlords and tribe leaders running around Eastern Europe. And it wasn't that long ago. Just because we have cell phones now does not mean that somehow our mental evolution has just snapped forward outside of territorialism and power accumulation. People be like, "Oh, no, that's ridiculous. Mark Zuckerberg's not a—he doesn't see himself as some sort of oligarch or monarch." And I'm like, why not? 75 years ago, he would have been—his mentality, he would have been the top of some tribe with guns or swords or whatever. And he would have been killing people to accumulate a version of power. This type of intellect, this type of power accumulation mindset would have been efforting to take him out of it as a human. But we have to reset our brains to realize how we have not evolved. It's been such a tiny, tiny amount of time. Even if you take us back to when Jesus was born 2,000 years ago, we haven't evolved in that time. Our brains don't change that quick. We are the same humans as we were 2,000 years ago. And to think that somehow these power dynamics have just changed—read The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene. And then think about your day-to-day life. Every single person in your life is playing power games with you in some way, shape, or form. We have not evolved.
--:-- Host: So I say that, and I want to get your feedback quickly on that. But I feel like we've just somehow said, "Oh, we have cell phones and cars and can travel in space, so now all of a sudden we are all playing this altruistic game." And it simply is not the case. We're not different people. We just have more destructive tools. And I just try to level set as often as we can on that.
--:-- Rob Latka: Yeah, I am. It's part of where I close with. So I won't give the full epilogue, but I'll give this little kernel. Which is that we are voting all the time with our time, our attention, our dollars, our votes. We vote, we make choices. All of us do. And a democracy—we still have a democracy. Thank God. I thank God that we have a democracy right now still, but it's not guaranteed. And if we're not voting with all of that—with our time and our attention and our dollars and our votes—if we're not actually choosing what we want and where we want the world to go and where we want our country to go, whether we're okay with China having what they have here and gaining what they gain—if we're not okay with that, then we need to start voting. And that's something I think that really matters.
--:-- Rob Latka: And for me, it's also a back to remembering—and I talked about it in the book as America as a startup—remembering who we were as a startup in that revolutionary moment. And it was a profoundly different idea that ordinary people had to say. We already had a king once. We don't need more kings, is my point. We don't need more feudal lords. What we actually need is to remember that it wasn't our government that gave us this. It's certainly not some corporation that owns some platform that gave us our rights. It's God-given rights. It's literally God-given. That's what is written into the most important documents that we've ever imagined could have ever existed. That life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness came not from a government or an empire or some super powerful person who had a higher IQ than anybody else. It came from God. That is God-given, and we all get it, and we're all equal in that. And so that's where I end the book—a sort of reminder around who we actually are and what we actually get as a part of the deal of having the idea that is America. And I think that we need to remember it.
--:-- Host: I couldn't agree with you more. From my shoulder to my elbow is an American flag with a negative space cross in it. My defining values in life are Judeo-Christian values. And upon that, I rest the original intent and ideals of the American Constitution and our founding fathers. And I think it's important for us to remember that somewhere around 40% of the members of the signing document did not want to be there. They were there because they felt an obligation to the people of the territories that they were representing. It wasn't that they were there to gain power, to become the governor. Our president could have had a third term and turned it down. They wanted to name him king, and he turned it down.
--:-- Rob Latka: That's right.
--:-- Host: Think of that today. Think of one of these individuals doing that. And that's who we were born out of. And I agree with you. Dude, this has been an incredible conversation. I am so happy to have spent this time with you and share your work with my audience. I know they can get the book on Amazon. I'll have all the links in the show notes. Is there anywhere else that you would like to send them to just learn more about your work in addition to the book?
--:-- Rob Latka: Yeah, I mean, I'm having as many conversations just like this one as I can have because you're right. Podcasts are really, really important so that we can make sure that real conversations are being had.
--:-- Rob Latka: Your listeners aren't going to agree with everything that I say. That's cool. I want that. I want them to actually delve in deep and to find out what they disagree with. And then I want them to talk about it with other people as they read the book. To me, that's the way that this book succeeds—it sparks a conversation that we need to have.
--:-- Rob Latka: That's the greatest thing that I could possibly imagine as a teacher that I could get to do—to start conversations. And frankly, as a citizen, that's the reason why it matters to me. I think that shedding light and not heat, and actually spreading a conversation that needs to be had, is why I'm here.
--:-- Host: Dude, I appreciate the hell out of you. The book's already killing it. I hope we're going to push hard here in my community to get you even more, to get this message on. I know a lot of people listening to this are dialed right in. So I appreciate the hell out of you, man. I wish you nothing but the best. It's awesome to meet you, Ryan.
--:-- Rob Latka: Thank you.
--:-- Rob Latka: Yeah. Make it look easy.
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